Churchville, VA—Biologists are again predicting massive species losses as the world warms. But where are the corpses?  There have been few findings of extinctions among continental bird and mammal species over the past 500 years. The species extinctions have been virtually all on islands, as humans have brought such alien predators as rats, cats, and Canadian thistles to places where they had no natural enemies.

A new study shows that flying squirrels have been adapting to recent warming since the 1990s by both moving and hybridizing. C.J. Garroway and his research team trapped more than 1600 of the flying squirrels in Ontario and Pennsylvania between 2002 and 2004. The flying squirrels’ DNA shows the southern G. volans flying squirrels are increasingly mating with the northern G. sabrinus flying squirrels. The researchers say this is the “first report of hybrid zone formation following a range expansion induced by contemporary climate change.”

That’s certainly interesting, but hardly earth-shaking. Ice cores and fossil pollen show the earth has had six major global warmings since the last Ice Age, interspersed with centuries-long cold periods. The earth’s temperatures are always cycling up and down.

We have even more dramatic evidence of creatures moving to stay at the right temperatures from the city of York, England. Excavations under the city find that the nettle ground bug was common in York during the Roman occupation in the first century, and during the Medieval Warming. In between those warm times, it has typically been found in the much-warmer south of England.

On the other hand, Italian researchers have just finished surveying bird species in a high Piedmont valley where the temperature since the early 1990s has increased about 1 degree C. How did the birds adapt?  They did nothing. Sixty-eight bird species were detected in both the 1992-94 survey and the 2003-05 survey. The researchers report “the number of species whose mean elevation increased (42) was higher than the number whose mean elevation decreased (19).”  But the birds move up and average of just  29 meters—not statistically different from zero.

Why didn’t the birds move?  We’d advise asking whether the birds’ food sources moved. Higher levels of CO₂ allow vegetation to adapt to higher temperatures—without moving. Perhaps the foliage, fruits and insects on which the birds depend didn’t change much either.

We might even think about humans adapting to a one-degree change in global average temperatures, rather than destroying our only available energy sources. The net warming since 1850 has been something less than 0.7 degree C when we allow for the increasing impact of urban heat islands on our thermometer 1–3 degree total warming in the early decades. Then the warming rocks along in 30-year up-and-and-down spurts, as we’ve seen in the earth’s 1915–1940 warming, its 1940–1975 cooling, and its 1976-1998 warming. For centuries at a time.  Until the sun brings the next global cooling.

We need to get rid of the biologists’ “climate envelope” theory that predicts species extinctions will occur unless their climate environment remains absolutely stable (never has been, never will be). Looking at real global history, specie extinctions are more likely to happen when the next asteroid collides with earth. Those are the times the earth has lost the vast majority of its species.

DENNIS T. AVERY, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC,  is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Global warming alarmists say at least a million wildlife species will ultimately be lost because the plants, trees and animals won’t be able to “keep up” with the rapid pace of man-made global warming. Laying aside the fact that global temperatures are currently declining instead of warming, how can the wild species hopefully adapt to further warming?

 

In Australia, biologists are closely studying the noxious alien cane toad. Bufo marinus was introduced from Southeast Asia in the 1930s to eat two species of beetles that were destroying the sugarcane fields. Unfortunately, the cane toads couldn’t jump high enough to catch many of the cane beetles. Instead, the nine-pound toads have thrived on birds’ eggs, native frogs, and any handy vegetation. Poisonous to eat, they’re also taking a toll on Australia’s natural predators.

 

From the species-survival standpoint, the cane toads have demonstrated remarkable changes over the decades since they were introduced. In a region where the toads have been living for more than 50 years, the researchers found the toads seldom moved very far, and meandered slowly through the cane fields.  But in regions newly invaded by the toads they behaved far differently.    

 

“Cane toads are now spreading through tropical Australia about 5-fold faster than in the early years of toad invasion,” researchers report. “The current invasion-front animals achieved these high invasion speeds by rarely using the same retreat site two days in succession, by traveling further each night when they did move, and by moving along straighter paths.” 

 

“The rapidity and magnitude of these shifts in cane toads are truly remarkable,” says the research team, “having been accomplished in only 50 generations”—about 70 years.

 

Cane toads are not that unusual. Biologist Chris Thomas, of Britain’s Leeds University, got famous by predicting the million-species loss in Nature in 2001. But his own reports noted that some butterflies “increased the variety of habitat types they can colonize.”  That spells broader success whether the butterflies move or not. He found two species of bush crickets “increase fractions of longer-winged (dispersive) individuals in recently founded populations.”   As long as the invasions succeed, evolution will select for dispersal.

 

Researchers in the 1990s found mudworms in the Hudson River with an amazing tolerance for cadmium—because they lived near a battery factory. “The evolution of cadmium resistance could have taken no more than 30 years,” says Jeffrey Levinton of the State University of New York-Stony Brook.

 

An Antarctic fish, the Pagothenia borchgrevinki, was recently found to tolerate temperatures up to 9 degrees C warmer than the near-frozen temperatures of Antarctic waters for the last 14 million years. Thus the fish could apparently survive even if the Antarctic ice cap melted. Such melting isn’t likely, given that the East Antarctic ice sheet is currently gaining 45 million tons of ice per year; it’s gotten warm enough to snow where the ice never melts. Instead it flows slowly downhill, making a “media splash” when it falls off the edge.

 

All over the planet, birds, butterflies, mammals and plants have been extending their ranges closer to the poles as the earth has warmed—mostly without giving up much of their previous habitat. They’re also prepared to retreat if necessary, because they carry the evolutionary knowledge of more than 500 global warmings—and 500 coolings—in the last million years.

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

 

Sources:

 

The million-species-extinction claim:  Guy Gugliatta, “Mass Extinction Looms by 2050, Climate Study Finds,” Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2004.

Cane toad invasion study:  R. A. Alford, et al., “Comparisons through time and space suggest rapid evolution of dispersal behavior in an invasive species,”  Wildlife Research 36, pp 23-28, 2009.

Chris Thomas’ study of extinction likelihood:  C.D. Thomas et al, “Ecological and Evolutionary Processes at Expanding Range Margins,” Nature 411, pp. 577-581, 2001.

Hudson River mudworms:  Jeffrey Levinton, “The Big Bang of Evolution,” Scientific American 267, pp. 84-91, 1992.

Antarctic fish surviving warmer water:   Simon Collins, “Antarctic Fish Set to Survive Warmer Seas,” New Zealand Herald, April 16, 2004.